Sunday, July 01, 2007

A bit of vacation

So I am headed back to Phx tomorrow after spending 10 days in Connecticut. I had two weddings to shoot during that time, plus I owed The Day a couple of days. Plus I got a lot of stuff done for our wedding. I won't be back in CT until Aug. 29 so I had to meet with a lot of our vendors while I was here.

It was a mixed blessing being here. It was nice to get a break and be able to think a bit outside of all that is happening with my dad. But it was incredibly hard to have to try to manage his healthcare over the phone.

He still is in the hospital. The rehab center was going to release him to the care home right before I left, but then they decided his blood pressure problem was too volatile to have him out of a hospital setting. So they sent him back to St. Joe's neuro lab. He has now been there the entire time I have been gone.

There were some rough patches in the last week. He got extremely dehydrated and his medications were making him out of his head a bit with paranoia. He told me he thought he was in prison and that he'd been trying to call 911 for someone to come rescue him. Then he said that it was a conspiracy and that I was in on it to keep him prisoner.

That was one of the worst conversations I've ever had to listen to. It scared me so much. I called and talked to his nurse who said she was aware of the problem and had called the doctor. I talked to the doctoer later in the day and he said it was a combination of the dehydration and medication. They got an IV in him and my cousin Patty who went down after I called her in a panic said it really calmed him down and made him come around again.

Since then, they did a chest xray and cat scan to make sure that the blood pressure problem was not some rare form of cancer which it was not. However they did find a pulmonary embolism that was lodged between his heart and his lung. They thought with his inactivity lately it formed in his leg and broke off, making it's way back north. They said it was sheer luck that it didn't kill him. So they threaded a filter into the vain to prevent it or anything else that shouldn't be there from making it back to the heart.

So it is a mixed bag going back there tomorrow. I'll be more able to be on top of things, but not very fun things to be on top of.

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers through this. My dsl still was not up and functioning when I left so hopefully more posts soon.

2 comments:

Ann said...

Kate,

I am so sorry to hear all of that. It must be so tough. I can't even imagine. But I think of you and your dad often. You are so strong and wonderful.
I love you.

-Ann

kate said...

thanks babe! i'll call you this week.
k.

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